"We have whole libraries of books and articles about 'Blackness,' world-beating traditions of music and literature, even entire academic departments 30 to 50 years old specializing in African American/black studies. Compared with blackness, whiteness and brownness are severely under-theorized.... [And] I considered the asymmetry of racial identities of blackness and whiteness — and how they function differently in American history and culture. These two identities don’t simply mirror each other — one works through a pronounced group identity; the other more often is lived as unraced individuality. However much you might see yourself as an individual, if you’re black, you also have to contend with other people’s views. W.E.B. Du Bois summed this up as 'twoness,' as seeing yourself as yourself but also knowing that other people see you as a black person. You don’t have to be a black nationalist to see yourself as black. In contrast, until quite recently white Americans rarely saw themselves as raced — as white. Most of them, anyway. The people who have embraced 'white' as a racial identity have been white nationalists, Ku Klux Klansmen and their ilk. Thanks to President Trump, white nationalists are more visible than ever in our public spaces. But that group does not determine how most white people see themselves. Instead, in terms of racial identity, white Americans have had the choice of being something vague, something unraced and separate from race. A capitalized 'White' challenges that freedom, by unmasking 'Whiteness' as an American racial identity as historically important as 'Blackness' — which it certainly is. No longer should white people be allowed the comfort of this racial invisibility; they should have to see themselves as raced. Being racialized makes white people squirm, so let’s racialize them with that capital W."
From "Why ‘White’ should be capitalized, too" by Nell Irvin Painter, the author of "The History of White People," who originally thought only "Black" should be capitalized (WaPo).
But what if being racialized doesn't make white people squirm? Just go back to the lower-case "w"? How does this dynamic of systemic white supremacy work? Why are you trusting white people to stick to feeling bad about the race you want them to pay much more attention to?
१२३ टिप्पण्या:
"The people who have embraced 'white' as a racial identity have been white nationalists, Ku Klux Klansmen and their ilk."
She has her ilk, I've got mine. And I have to admit, we didn't invent peanut butter or rap "music".
"Thanks to President Trump, white nationalists are more visible than ever in our public spaces"
Insert "media reaction to" before "President" and he's right.
But it's the Post, so ...
"if you’re black, you also have to contend with other people’s views."
Unlike other people!
"Being racialized makes white people squirm, so let’s racialize them with that capital W."
Actually, it makes us yawn. But if you insist that we really, truly must think about whiteness above all, that what we do and accomplish is all whitish, it might actually make us proud, and more eager to assert and defend our superiority.
"Why are you trusting white people to stick to feeling bad about the race you want them to pay much more attention to?"
Exactly right, Althouse. Which also illustrates that blacks are doubly wrong in their supposed double consciousness: not only is it not unique, they also do not understand actual whites very well.
Hey, times up. This is now boring me stiff The drug addled thug has been dead for weeks, the riots devolved into a sport for sad white kids. You could have been banging on about this White white for years, but no, no you were too fucking lame to come up with it until some negro dude is accidentally killed by a cop. Did I say accidentally? Yep.
Diversitist philosophy and practice, not limited to racism and sexism.
I'm always amused when black people write about what white people think.
Thanks to President Trump, white nationalists are more visible than ever in our public spaces.
I don't know if I totally agree with that since so much of it depends on what you mean by "white nationalists". When you plug in the word "Nationalist" into Google, the definition comes back as this:
identification with one's own nation and support for its interests, especially to the exclusion or detriment of the interests of other nations.
Now, certainly that at least partially describes MAGA and Trump and his supporters. You could quible about the whole "especially to the exclusion or detriment" of other nation's interests part a bit with regards to Trump supporters. Especially implies that Trump supporters want to go out of their way to hurt other nations, which I really don't think is a fair way to describe the typical Trump supporter.
My point is, if we are using that particular definition of "natioanlist" I don't think it fairly could be used to describe Trump supporters.
Why recognize people by the color of their skin? Stop that and you won't need to worry about whether to capitalize one race or another or if color of one's skin actually denotes what race they belong.
Thanks to President Trump, white nationalists are more visible than ever in our public spaces.
This is entirely bullshit and is the narrative of the short-memory media on all sides these days. Do people already forget how the Tea Party was portrayed? You'd have thought it was a second coming of the Nuremberg Rallies. And it was, at first, a multi-ethnic organically sprouted group of people from across the nation. The multi-ethnic aspect of it slimmed down after the press and Democratic pols had their way with fictionalizing what they saw there (including the late John Lewis).
The sightings of white nationalists has always been a full-time job of the national media. They see signs of them everywhere. Remember 'dog whistles'? Whatever happened to those? Remember Bush 41 is Hitler, Bush 43 is Hitler, McCain is Hitler, Romney is Hitler, and Trump? He's so Hitler even Hitler isn't enough. Nevermind that he produced more jobs for Black Americans than anyone before him, dropped Black unemployment to the lowest levels in history, put through prison reform, and is working on school choice- something the Black Congressional Caucus is somehow against.
Anyway...anything that pushes for more collectivism (i.e. Whiteness) I am completely against. It is the tribalism of America. The Balkanization of this country and it will be the end of us.
"Being racialized makes white people squirm." Um, no. No it doesn't. Maybe the White people Prof. Painter hangs out with, but not us deplorables. The professor gave the game away when she stated, "Thanks to President Trump, white nationalists are more visible than ever in our public spaces." Really? More than in 1962 Mississippi? How do smart people get to be so dumb?
The democrats are certainly teaching me to think white first, american second.
Imagine the "intellectual heft" gays and trans can crow about because universities have queer studies departments. I'm so jealous.
Black black black black black poor me black black black black black so different so sad black black black black black oppressor conspiracy black black black black black reparations black black black black black
Did I miss anything?
Thanks to President Trump, white nationalists are more visible than ever in our public spaces.
Thanks to leftist identity politics, the largest ethnic cohort in the United States learned to identify as a voting bloc.
Be careful what you wish for.
The people saying these things don't believe them.
It is a play for power and nothing more.
The question is one of utility: What delivers more power?
If white folks ever saw themselves as a cohesive group, nobody would benefit.
That is one possibility, but it is not inevitable.
If the pushing continues, the snap-back will be awful.
Shit or get off the pot.
Mike said...
The drug addled thug has been dead for weeks, the riots devolved into a sport for sad white kids
Why Is IT?
that the Overwhelming majority of BLM 'protesters' are White College Coeds?
And the Overwhelming majority of BLM 'rioters' are White College dropouts?
I hope for the day when your skin color is no more important to your identity than your eye color.
Richard said...
white nationalists are more visible than ever in our public spaces." Really? More than in 1962 Mississippi?
I'll see your 1962 Mississippi, and Raise you a 1861 Mississippi
Identity is shaped by a shared history. Blacks in America, for the most part, have a shared history, and that creates a shared sense of identity. The problem is that this is really rather unique. While whites benefited from slavery, this was a relatively small percentage. White folks brought very distinct and even confrontational histories with them, with old world conflicts not easily overcome. This is true for Latin American and African and Asian populations too, where race theory tends to lump these groups together, their actual histories are often very polarizing. A Filipino and a Japanese immigrant are not exactly sharing a commonality beyond some superficial regional traits.
But lumping complexity into generalities serves to enable sweeping responses that then forces everyone into the boxes that such responses are made to handle.
"Being racialized makes white people squirm, so let’s racialize them with that capital W."
Actually, it makes us yawn. But if you insist that we really, truly must think about whiteness above all, that what we do and accomplish is all whitish, it might actually make us proud, and more eager to assert and defend our superiority.
Pretty much. You can tell how much a person suspects their own inferiority by how much they prate about the presumed (or demonstrated) superiority of others.
Black folks are rapidly becoming chain-smoking trailer-park women. "White people think their shit don't stink."
even entire academic departments 30 to 50 years old specializing in African American/black studies.
So the phrases "Professional Victim Studies" and "Mostly Bullshit" should be capitalized?
The people who have embraced 'white' as a racial identity have been... almost entirely blacks and some whites complaining about whiteness and white people.
"Being racialized makes white people squirm, so let’s racialize them with that capital W."
The black woman, whose ilk I described just above, is an anti-white racist who fantasizes about harming white people. Let's buy her book!
i just saw this Quintin Tarantino quote, while looking for something else
As a writer, I demand the right to write any character in the world that I want to write. I demand the right to be them, I demand the right to think them and I demand the right to tell the truth as I see they are, all right? And to say that I can't do that because I'm white, but the Hughes brothers can do that because they're black, that is racist. That is the heart of racism, all right. And I do not accept that ... That is how a segment of the black community that lives in Compton, lives in Inglewood, where Jackie Brown takes place, that lives in Carson, that is how they talk. I'm telling the truth. It would not be questioned if I was black, and I resent the question because I'm white. I have the right to tell the truth. I do not have the right to lie
how come Quintin hasn't been cancelled yet?
When does the #MeToo movement for Hispanics and Asians kick off? Or are they just running with the whole honorary White people thing?
Chapter 31 in her book, "The Paradox of Rachel Dolezal", is especially interesting.
Being racialized makes the White Worm squirm in his lair.
I am sure that Ms. Painter will find America more to her liking when whites are no longer a majority, and our place has been taken by brown and yellow people whose women are not overcome with guilt feelings about slavery. She had better learn how to whinge in Spanish.
And I have to admit, we didn't invent peanut butter or rap "music".
I do like peanut butter. The first patent for it was by a Canadian, Marcellus Gilmore Edson, in 1884. That's 30 years before Carver wrote about it. He was a white guy, so if it's an "us vs. them" thing, put that one on our side - although nut butters were around long before that, so who knows who really invented it.
Dr. John Harvey Kellogg patented a process to make peanut butter from raw peanuts in 1895. (Again, before Carver's publication in 1916.) According to the National Peanut Board, "Peanut butter was first introduced at the 1893 Chicago World Fair." I found this out because I was looking up the very important question, who invented the pb & j sandwich?.
Projection again. Always projection with liberals. Thanks to President Trump, white nationalists are more visible than ever in our public spaces. Gee, President Donald John Trump, to my knowledge, has never embraced "white nationalism", whatever that is. Seems to be a liberal boogeyman of sorts. Seems the only tie between President Donald John Trump and "white nationalism" is liberals making the non-existent connection to accuse him of it.
"White nationalism" is only discussed by liberal, only by them.
Sort of like the secret codewords I often read about that express racism. And I've never been issued the codebook... but apparently now "individualism" is one of them. It changes so fast that I don't think the secret codebook could even keep up.
Results of the identity test have been well known for years. Ask Americans the 5 things they are. Blacks always put "Black" as #1 or #2 on the list. Whites never put white on the list. And even other ethnic groups rarely put their ethnicity there- even if it's a major part of them. Some American Indians may put their tribe down. Not Indian, but their tribe- which is what they identify as. Completely open ended test. You're not given a list. Just the question "List what you are." For most males profession or rank is one of those things. Lawyer, Doctor, Chief Petty Officer, coal miner.... For married females employed outside the home- normally in the top 10, but not the top 5- almost like there was difference between men and women.
Now, a question. Is the fact that Blacks identify as blacks so strongly a weakness or a strength? In a society based on individual and not group identity, IMHO, it's a weakness. You should identify by your life choices- husband or wife, father or mother, profession, religion (you may have been born in one- but you have a choice- this is the USA, not sharialand), things you choose to be. Things you can change by choosing.
Paddy O @ 11:04 =
Yes.
I know my poor white family never owned slaves. Life was hard for a lot of immigrants back in the day. Life is hard. Now life is easy... and the bitching and moaning is fever-pitch.
What's the old advertising bromide?
When you have nothing to say, sing it!!
These are such awful people. Could we just cancel them and get on with it?
So much of this is just fantasy word play. Blacks haven't sat around pining for capitalization any more than whites have sat around fearing it. White and Black both refer to groups of people, and either both should be capitalized or neither (I don't much care which, but I do care about consistency).
So much of our current age of activism is completely divorced from the reality of people's lives, which is probably why it's so hysterical. It has to find pretend meaning somewhere.
Did I miss anything?
The shorter version is "black black blackity black".
And I have to admit, we didn't invent peanut butter or rap "music".
Peanut butter was invented by Marcellus Gilmore Edson, who, despite being white, was also a Canadian, so I guess he wasn't really part of "we".
If you're thinking of G.W. Carver, a little research will show that he never discovered or did anything useful with peanuts.
For some reason this makes me think of Tip O'Neil's comment that the Kennedys aren't really Irish because they've never been ashamed of their parents.
The professor gave the game away when she stated, "Thanks to President Trump, white nationalists are more visible than ever in our public spaces." Really? More than in 1962 Mississippi? How do smart people get to be so dumb?
How Nell Irvin Painter lost me.
The (unnecessary) dig at Trump was the point where I could feel my mood shift. Any interest in what she had to say evaporated. She may very well be right on everything else, but her level of believably, for me, went from high to zero.
I'm not saying I ignore valid discussions of the president, just stuff that has the random "orange man bad" line thrown in so their friends know they are putting out their required daily levels of rightspeak.
Anyhow, White and Black isn't a thing. Who cares about what color people are? Why is that a thing?
Where I come from, it's Jew and Gentile (/Goy). That's important. A black (Yemenite) Jew is a Jew, and a white (neo-Nazi, probably) goy is for sure a goy.
It isn't right that G__im still get around 80% of Nobel Prizes. 80%! Our society has a long way to go to achieve justice.
No longer should white people be allowed the comfort of this racial invisibility; they should have to see themselves as raced.
Bad idea. Bad bad bad. Really bad. The last fucking thing we need to do is to convince White people that being White matters. Really. That way leads to a really nasty ending for everyone.
In contrast, until quite recently white Americans rarely saw themselves as raced — as white. Most of them, anyway.
But, as Gospace discusses above, they saw themselves as ethnics --- Irish, Jews, Germans, Italian, English, Scottish, Hungarian, Swedes, etc, etc. We're losing track of that now because we're all multi-ethnic mongrels, but that wasn't the case a few generations back. That's because while being white is pretty vacuous, lots of history, culture, and community comes with ethnicity.
"Thanks to [the insane, hateful reaction to the election of] President Trump, white nationalists [a boogeyman largely in the imagination of the fevered left] are more visible than ever [as a lying tool used by MSM with the agenda of removing Trump]."
An invitation to and an invocation of tribalism. What could possibly go wrong with that?
For a recent example see the Hutus and the Tutsis in Rwanda. One tribe is up, the other tribe is down, but ultimately each tribe gets its licks in.
The genius of the USA is from e pluribus unum. And these clowns can't seem to recall that. And no I'm not denying that various minorities African Americans among them have had it tough from time to time. You can also say that about Mexican braceros, Irish immigrants in the latter half of the 19th Century, Italians, Chinese, Japanese, Eastern Europeans and immigrants from Russia and from the south of Europe.
I'm sorry, but Painter's paragraph is just gibberish. Or should that be Gibberish? I don't wish to insult any Gibbers.
white Americans have had the choice of being something vague, something unraced and separate from race.
No.
Whites knew they were white, knew they werent "unraced",
but chose not to focus on being Caucasian.
Life presented more pressing issues that demanded attention
wallowing/reveling in your race wont get you anywhere.
'Race' isnt a plan. Or goal.
Functional living demands behavior/performance independent of race.
"Compared with blackness, whiteness and brownness are severely under-theorized.... "
That's what we need, more theorizing. Good grief.
As to white nationalism, I've never understood the term. I understand white, and I understand nationalism (which I consider to be a virtue), but "white" is not a nation. Perhaps if we had more white theorizing we could get to the bottom of this.
"If you're thinking of G.W. Carver, a little research will show that he never discovered or did anything useful with peanuts."
You guys! I was trying to be generous. At least they still get credit for rap "music". Plus, they built the pyramids.
And the Overwhelming majority of BLM 'rioters' are White College dropouts?
7/22/20, 11:00 AM
Judging by Andy Ngo's twitter feed, antifa seems to attract white lawyers. Two of them were arrested in Portland for violence. And then there are the two in NY who threw a Molotov cocktail at a police car.
Then there is Tim Kaine's son, an antifa arrested for planning an attack on a Trump rally - this in 2016, when his father was selected as Hill's VP.
So you have lawyers who don't believe in the rule of law and the children of prominent Democrat politicians who don't believe in democracy.
There is a whole continent that is run by blacks. No whites need apply. In fact, the few whites that lived in two countries there were pretty much driven out and blacks have enjoyed 100% black rule. It has worked out splendidly. The whole continent is a showplace for black rule. I understand there are plenty of immigration visas available and I am not even sure you need a visa. Go for it !
Lower case "w"
Meh.
Sorry, lefties, ain't getting all bothered about. Capitalize black all you want. Doing so won't make blacks any smarter or their culture any better.
Maybe we should all be e.e. cummings.
Where does this leave all the mixed-race people, the mulattoes and creoles and such? Or do we stick with the one-drop rule?
Diversity is Marxist (i.e. class-based) dogma of the Progressive Church. Both white and black are adjectives to describe low information attributes. Remember, albino Africans are black, too. #BLM
When I get a survey asking for my race, I always answer “human.”
Sorry, not playing this stupid, vicious, zero-sum game.
"Why are you trusting white people to stick to feeling bad about the race you want them to pay much more attention to?"
Convincing many (most?) people to head in the direction of seeing others as individuals and not in terms of identity groups seems like a major triumph of the late 20th century. Now that's being turned back for short term political goals. Stage One Thinking. Yikes!
I like Pale Patriarchal Professorial Penis Person myself, but that's a mouthful, so White it shall be.
Narr
a.k.a. Whitey McWhiterson
It'd be great if AP and the English Teachers would actually do their jobs and report the news & teach grammar instead of "Fighting Racism and Fascism" by deciding which words should be capitalized or not. Personally, I'm a random captializer. sometimes i do, and SOMETIMES I DON'T. But from now on I will be sure to capitalize White. Because being White is OK. ALL RACES MATTER.
I really don’t care, do you? I guess we no longer have to call blacks African American. How about BLACK, or blacK, or BLAck? It makes no difference in the long run because it’ll be changed again in ten years or so.
I'm actually what I think of as a rather pleasing shade of light brown, rather than White.
But I identify as an ancient Aztec Warrior, so I'm an Oppressed Minority. So there.
Nyeh.
tcrosse said...
Where does this leave all the mixed-race people, the mulattoes and creoles and such? Or do we stick with the one-drop rule?
There's this thing about the one drop rule. Who decides which way the drop works? And what if they change their mind?
Why are academics-Progressives-Democrats so obsessed with race? We've been trying to get rid of stereotypes and bigotry since the 1960s. Why do they want to stratify individuals into classes? I suggest we create a Race Bureau so we can re-create the pseudoscience so popular in Europe during the '20s, '30s, and early '40s.
Original Mike said...
As to white nationalism, I've never understood the term. I understand white, and I understand nationalism (which I consider to be a virtue), but "white" is not a nation. Perhaps if we had more white theorizing we could get to the bottom of this.
I prefer the term "Patriotism" to "Nationalism" when thinking about myself. As I delineated upthread, in the definition of "Nationalism" there seems to be the strong implication that some who is a "nationalist" is a person who particularly wants to bring down other nations, someone who views the world in zero sum terms, that for one nation to prosper other nations must suffer. I believe in a political philosophy that puts America first, but I disagree with those notion that for America to be first other nations have to necessarily suffer, or at least those that aren't actively trying to undermine us anyway (China).
For example, I don't like the current Communist Chinese government. I think we should do what we reasonably can to hold them accountable for their bad behavoir over the years and also to do what we can to divest ourselves from them in general. It's also true that I'd welcome an overthowing of the current Communist regime in China. But I'm certainly not rooting for the suffering or misery of the Chinese people. Quite the opposite. A strong, free China full of hard working Chinese people would be an amazing thing for not just for the Chinese people, and not just for America, it would be an amazing thing for humanity.
"No longer should white people be allowed the comfort of this racial invisibility; they should have to see themselves as raced. Being racialized makes white people squirm, so let’s racialize them with that capital W."
The internet says Ms Painter is married to a White guy - Glenn "Squirmy" Shafer, a famous mathematician.
I despise, detest, and distrust the WaPoo; the NYT, too!
"...Penis Person myself, but that's a mouthful..."
Braggart.
The fundamental premise on which white supremacy is based is the premise that there are fundamental differences between the races. It is bewildering to me to hear these "anti-racist" thinkers and writers embrace this premise so fervently with their discussions of "Whiteness" and "Blackness".
It will be a brighter future when the last of these racialist corksoakers is gone.
Silly games white liberals play. OMG who fucking cares?!?
Owen said...
When I get a survey asking for my race, I always answer “human.”
Sorry, not playing this stupid, vicious, zero-sum game.
Just a random thought that crossed my mind as I read this. In HS I could have answered "mile". Wasn't all that fast, but I always finished and was never lapped- so there is that. Finished 4th once....
My fear is that this hectoring (esp. the part about declaring all white Americans of Original Sin racism simply because their skins are white) will re-racialize the country. I'm old enough to remember what the South was like in the late-Fifties / early-Sixties. It wasn't pretty. It wasn't just. Jim Crow II would be / will be worse. Every January, I thank God that the Rev. Martin Luther King, jr. lived. But I see his life's work being undone and his sacrifice turned to vanity.
Modern intellectualism has really gotten tedious and boring. It's so relentlessly depressing that's it's unreadable. I can't get through a paragraph without asking myself "why am I reading this crap? I can not possibly be be better off or wiser afterward.
I've been thinking lately that maybe I have been lucky enough to have lived during the peak of civilization, and now maybe just a little too long.
"Shenandoah" 1965. Jimmy Stewart tries to keep his family out of the Civil War.
But war intrudes, inevitably.
When it breaks out, as it is now doing, it is very difficult not to get drawn in.
Being racialized makes white people squirm, so let’s racialize them with that capital W."
Only white people who have internalized other people's racist ideology there is something wrong with white skin squirm over being called white. Normals don't give a shit.
It is revealing left wingers are openly expressing their desire to inflict mental harm by race though. I think this is a breakthrough. The next stage is understanding how they became evil so they can retrace their steps and heal themselves.
Are south Indians "black" or "Black" or "White" or "People of Color"?
The last fucking thing we need to do is to convince White people that being White matters.
Ich bin so alt, ich erinnere mich noch Lebensraum, and Herrenvolk!!
uncle tom dot com.
I thought it impolite to brag in public, but given that you insist on mentioning it, being White rocks. Number One, baby!
whiteness isn't a thing any more than blackness is. It's all made up bullshit by a bunch of bigots in academia. Go tell the Italians who came to America from 120 years ago that they were "white" and they'd have laughed at you and thought you were crazy. Most immigrant groups weren't considered white, either. It's all a big joke as if color of the your skin means everything. It doesn't. It's the least interesting thing about you, but some folks need to obsess over it because, well, that's what bigots do.
I never really noticed it before just recently but blacks are absolutely obsessed with what whitey thinks about them, and even more, when whitey DOESN'T think about them at all.
It's really rather comical.
"Compared with blackness, whiteness and brownness are severely under-theorized.... “
I thought that intellectualizing stuff was bad. It’s hard to keep up.
Ann: "But what if being racialized doesn't make white people squirm?"
That's pride, fucking with them. Fuck pride. Repeat after me, Whities, in the fifth, our asses go down.
"How about BLACK, or blacK, or BLAck?"
Steve Martin beat you to it by 30 years...
H: What was your name again?
S: SanDeE*
H: I’m sorry, Sandy, Sandy… It’s a nice name. Everybody has such weird names now, it’s like Tiffany with a P-H-I, and instead of Nancy it’s Nancine. [He begins to write her name down.]
S: Big S, small A, small N, big D, small E, big E.
H: What?
S: Big S, small A, small N, big D, small E, big E. [She grabs his hand and writes directly on it.] Big S, small A, small N, big D, small E, big E. Then there’s a little star at the end.
With all that white people have done in the areas of science, medicine, technology, literature, entertainment, commerce, etc., white should be spelled WHITE.
In a year or two it will be "discovered" that using a lower case "w" in the word "white" is somehow actually evidence of white privilege and of systemic racism. (Forgive me for not being clever enough to explain how that interpretation could be possible. This stuff is just mind numbing BS to me.)
It is absolutely insane to racialize white people and to have them think about race all the time. And on top of this you want to insult them and denigrate them? How is it smart to inspire race hatred?
Consider how racist prison is. If you're a white person sentenced to prison, you might feel obligated to join the aryan brotherhood just to stay alive. That's because in prison your safety is jeopardized.
So as you defund the police and actively pursue policies that are hostile to white people, do you really expect there will be no ugly consequences?
A capitalized 'White' challenges that freedom, by unmasking 'Whiteness' as an American racial identity as historically important as 'Blackness' — which it certainly is.
When Wokes and Racists Actually Agree on Everything
"Are south Indians 'black' or 'Black' or 'White' or 'People of Color'?
Reminds me of an encounter I once had with a woman from India who was cutting my hair. I don't usually like chit-chat when I'm in a barber of hair-stylist's chair but she was very pretty and, I sensed, attracted to me. I'm of Anglo-Irish background myself and have what George Carlin called that pale, blue-tinted, never-tan Irish skin. She may have been lighter-skinned than I am and seemed to want to go out of her way to reassure me was "white" or "White," too. She told me that south Indians were pretty much a separate race, more African than Indian because south India (she claimed) was once part of Africa but detached itself in a form, I suppose, of Sub-Continental Drift. She fairly oozed a sense of ethnic superiority. I thought the lesson was that wherever you go, whatever the skin tones, there's always one group looking down on another group.
Matt said...
I never really noticed it before just recently but blacks are absolutely obsessed with what whitey thinks about them, and even more, when whitey DOESN'T think about them at all.
It's really rather comical.
From my vantage point, I'd rather most people didn't think about me at all. My wife and children are the only people I care to think about.
Anyone else- if I'm thinking about them- it's probably not good things I'm thinking. And I imagine it's vice versa.
To really show the proper deference, all the letters in BLACK should be capitalized when referring to those who identify as a dark color. The rest of us can go on identifying as human beings, without a capital H or B.
"As I delineated upthread, in the definition of "Nationalism" there seems to be the strong implication that some who is a "nationalist" is a person who particularly wants to bring down other nations, someone who views the world in zero sum terms, that for one nation to prosper other nations must suffer."
I don't believe any of that. I believe independent nations acting in their own best interests is a logical and efficient way to conduct international relations.
"I'm old enough to remember what the South was like in the late-Fifties / early-Sixties."
Were did you live?
Not too long ago, I thought it was facile to bring up the racist history of the Democrat Party--being on the wrong side of the Civil War, birthing the KKK--as part of a critique of today's Democrat Party. I also thought a comedy video like this one, while amusing in a smirky way, elided meaningful differences and presented a false equivalence based on coincidence of language and/or concepts. I see that the woke have made a fool of me, though, by embracing an explicitly, undeniably racist worldview, no longer cloaked in any kind of communitarian patriotism or social benefit.
I keep hearing that the scary part of all this racial essentialism is that it will invigorate or even instantiate a White identity. Maybe, but isn't just, like, bad on its face to subsume an individual's identity and destiny into crude categories based on skin color, even if it doesn't unleash the white man's inner George Wallace? Or is that just a sordid example of white supremacist thinking?
On the White identity thing: I just finished some thought experiments with my older daughter: can you have a completely Asian school that is still diverse? A white one? A black one? It's sad that even in a city rich in ethnic cultural heritage, young people today don't realize that a room full of Asians can contain a multitude of cultures, much less a room full of Polacks, Italians, Russians, Jews and Irish represent a diverse group. Among other problems with BLM-style activism and White Fragility-style thinking is that it's very, very dumbed down, and as with multiculturalism in general, is not an embrace of interesting and different things but a way to avoid having to know about things.
If I can choose my own personal pronoun, why shouldn't I be able to choose my own adjective? I choose "irritated".
Blogger Joe Smith said..."With all that white people have done in the areas of science, medicine, technology, literature, entertainment, commerce, etc., white should be spelled WHITE."
Maybe that's why there are not "whole libraries of books and articles about" 'Whiteness'. Priorities.
My comment at 2:53pm was just a tiny bit tongue-in-cheek, in case anybody missed it. In reality, I spent a number of formative years growing up outside North America, despite being 100% American by birth etc., and possibly because of that, the relentless focus on What Race* Are You? that distorts so much of the usual modern American discussion of ethnicity strikes me as just weird. (*As though there were "Whites", and "Blacks", and maybe sometimes "Hispanics", and even more rarely "Asians", period).
If I traveled back in time and queried my high-school self about the ethnicities of my schoolmates – WASPs, Yugoslavs, Jews, Lebanese, Turks, generic mutt Americans, Filipinos, Koreans, and yes, American blacks – and specifically asked them the apparently all-important question "White or Not-White?" I'm pretty sure my younger self would have just stared in near incomprehension. Yeah, some were "white" and some probably weren't, I guess, my younger self would have said – what of it? It would be like making left- or right-handedness the Most Important Question in the World; an extremely crude and artificial mapping of category onto the existing diversity of the kids around me, and just about the most blatantly racist thing I can think of.
Are south Indians "black" or "Black" or "White" or "People of Color"?
"we, the colored people, newly emancipated and rejoicing in our blood-bought freedom"
I thought the blackness/African American studies were programs primarily designed to allow unprepared students graduate. Is that incorrect?
I didn't realize there was a whole lot of scholarship going on there.
Thomas Sowell:
"Have we reached the ultimate stage of absurdity where some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, while other people are not held responsible for what they themselves are doing today?"
https://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2016/11/01/random-thoughts-n2239596
I am bored with this. I don’t know Black people. I don’t know White people. I know people.
Pretty early on I learned it was a mistake to categorize people by the color of their skin. It only leads to regret and embarrassment.
We have a bunch of people trying to work out what is wrong with their lives by resorting to stereotypes of themselves and others. They are bound to fail if they pursue these lines.
Sad.
Please don't try to tell me that Irish = English because American blacks see us that way. Why they themselves put out a handout saying white = Protestant which means white does not equal Irish-American. Apparently we aren't. And what's more we never have been. Apparently no Irish-Catholic has ever existed in the US, not even Archie Bunker. Sorry John Carroll, sorry Sheridan, sorry Kennedy, sorry self. We aren't black, also we aren't white, Hispanic or Asian. I guess we are grayed out like a non-functional menu item. Or maybe we're Americans as we think we are? Join us. Send us the grayed-out, the cancelled and all the rest, the people who are tired of crazy and poor at faking agreement with it, the huddled masses in their houses, yearning to breathe free without a mask. Liberty is still the future's golden door.
So it was OK when that old guy shouted "White Power" to the aging harpies at The Villages, then?
What was all the fuss about?
I overheard two men, obviously Jewish, talking at the Y. One said his son had been rejected at UC-SF medical school, his first choice, but admitted to Harvard Med.
"Harvard, but not UC?" the friend said.
The father laughed, briefly. "Now, we're white," he said.
My parents raised me to treat people with courtesy and respect. I try to do that. Nearly everyone responds in kind. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do now. Be especially nice to black people? Apologize to someone? I will stick with courtesy and respect for all, regardless of color, creed or capitalization.
I don't really want to have to be "racialized" into being a "white person," especially when that apparently means that I am presumed to be sinful and unworthy.
However, if you are going to force me into a racial category, I am going to make the most of it, and take pride in what my "race" has accomplished. Which is pretty much everything if you describe "white" as Western civilization.
Sorry. No "white guilt" for me.
Let's see if we're still talking about which race should be capitalized when the Derek Chauvin verdict is announced.
"they themselves put out a handout saying white = Protestant"
My first thought on reading that horrible Smithsonian* infographic was that somebody had gained their entire knowledge of white people! from watching early Woody Allen movies. "Hey, where's the bit about always eating mayonnaise!?"
*As someone who used to spend weekends volunteering at the National Museum of Natural History, that such a racist excrescence could ever be produced under the Smithsonian's imprimatur has been, well... res ipse loquitur.
What's with all the fuss? Be like Obama and "self identify" as whatever you like. Could be entertaining, no?
In a year or two it will be "discovered" that using a lower case "w" in the word "white" is somehow actually evidence of white privilege and of systemic racism.
Just before that we'll be told that the lack of Black faces on supermarket shelves is prima fascia evidence of systematic racism.
The last time white racialized themselves in any meaningful way, six million jews (and a ton of other people) died.
"However, if you are going to force me into a racial category, I am going to make the most of it, and take pride in what my "race" has accomplished. Which is pretty much everything if you describe "white" as Western civilization."
It's why they need to tear down Western Civ, objectivity, goal setting, etc, isn't it? Because if we're going to racialize it and compare accomplishments, well…
If I'm guilty of slave holding even though I was born in 1955, then I'm also responsible for science, engineering, and curing polio. I'm quite a guy.
not an embrace of interesting and different things but a way to avoid having to know about things.
Oh my, but that is well said. Two snaps up!
Known Unknown said...
The last time white racialized themselves in any meaningful way, six million jews (and a ton of other people) died.
That was Germans- one singular variety of white people. Remember- in Europe, national and ethnic identities are, for the most part, interchangeable. Belgium, Britain, not so much. And even now- Spain. Can you tell the difference between Catalans and Andalusians? They can. In Britain the Scots, English, Welsh, and Irish can all tell each other at glance- we can't.
Honestly, one of the greatest ideas in America was the simple slogan- E Pluribus Unum, from many, one. The intermarriage rate between different ethnic groups was high even well before the Revolution. And now, with easy travel and mobility, especially among the upper middle class, regions in the US are constantly mixing. The US has one national identity- American, and every other identity is subsumed by that- except in Texas. But even that's not as strong as it once was.
Now there are still some pockets of America where you're an outside unless you were born there- no matter how long you've lived there. But even they consist of mixed ethnic groups- and their children tend to move elsewhere.
This drive to celebrate diversity has never been anything but a thinly designed attempt to destroy the American identity in favor of a tribal one. White Americans have never been a tribe. The left doesn't realize how dangerous it would be to turn us into one.
Just think of the implications of whites behaving as a tribe. Tribes don't generally attack good neighbors. Asians, safe. Most Latinos- however you want to define them, safe, mostly. Some, not so much. Think it would be by county or town... Look at the black on white crime rate. How long do you think a White Tribe would tolerate that? Tribal action would be entirely separated from legal action.
I will stick with courtesy and respect for all, regardless of color, creed or capitalization.
The new normal is old-fashioned.
I always thought this was the favorite picture of Democrats- complete with truthful caption.
http://www.floppingaces.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/ElianGonzalez7-1.png
White Americans have never been a tribe.
American Conservativism (e.g. Declaration, Constitution) did not indulge diversity and similar class of bigotry before social progress.
I ain't apologizing fer nuthin I didn't do.
Trying to make people squirm is NOT what the black Civil Rights Movement is about.
Rusty said...
"I ain't apologizing fer nuthin I didn't do."
You guys are stupid with this shit. I know - not a dime's coming out of your pocket for reparations, either - you're firm on that.
Fucking idiots.
Replying to Joannie Jacobs, who wrote: "My parents raised me to treat people with courtesy and respect. I try to do that. Nearly everyone responds in kind. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do now. " THanks for writing that. I'm totally with you on this. I have been, since the co-vid lockdowns, more conscious about greeting people I meet while walking my dog. It does create an awareness of ways that we are all alike.
You tell us, Uncle Crack, Massa State's good and faithful servant!
I'd just like to hear someone, anyone--Cornel West, Nick Cannon, anyone who thinks Black Lives Matter is a thing worth fighting for--define "black". Is it melanin? How much? The cast of one's features? The texture of hair? "I know it when I see it" doesn't work for me.
I'm no lawyer, but my understanding is that precise definitions matter. Give us a definition we can work with. Who, exactly, IS black? Who, precisely, is not?
The Crack Emcee said...
Trying to make people squirm is NOT what the black Civil Rights Movement is about.
I'll give you this, generally you eschew the crudeness of a direct lie.
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